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Chinese Surveillance Expands to Muslims Making Mecca Pilgrimage

Chinese Surveillance Expands to Muslims Making Mecca Pilgrimage

Wall Street Journal, 1 August 2018

By Eva Dou – China’s close watch over its Islamic minority is being extended abroad, as Muslims from some Chinese regions make the Hajj pilgrimage wearing state-issued tracking devices.

The state-run China Islamic Association published photos of Chinese Muslims at the Beijing airport departing for Mecca in Saudi Arabia in recent days wearing customized “smart cards” on blue lanyards around their necks. The devices, which include a GPS tracker and personal data, are designed to ensure the wearer’s safety, according to the association.

Human rights activists contend the tracking devices are another example of China’s extraordinary efforts to monitor its Muslim minority using modern surveillance tools.

“This is yet-another way of persecuting Muslims for practicing their religion, by suggesting that they require to be monitored rather like criminal suspects or persons serving a suspended prison sentence,” said Eva Pils, a China human rights expert at King’s College London.

China has detained hundreds of thousands of Muslim Uighurs in “political re-education” centers and other facilities in its northwest, according to a statement from the U.S. State Department last week. China legal expert Jerome Cohen says the detentions are possibly the largest outside the criminal process in China since the Maoist “anti-rightist” campaign of the 1950s.

China’s United Front Work Department, which oversees religious regulation, and its Ministry of Public Security didn’t respond to requests for comment Tuesday. China has previously said its restrictive policies for Muslims were needed to fight terrorism.

The state-run Global Times highlighted usage of the Mecca tracking devices Tuesday, saying they were being used by fewer than a third of the 11,500 Chinese Muslims making the pilgrimage. Pilgrims from the Xinjiang region, which has been a center of Muslim unrest, aren’t wearing the devices this year, the newspaper said.

“They are piloting and trialing it, likely with an eye on expanding it,” said Adrian Zenz, a lecturer at the European School of Culture and Theology who studies China’s policies for Muslims and Tibetans.

Mr. Zenz added that while authorities are interested in monitoring the pilgrims, there could be legitimate reasons for the tracking given past stampedes and other problems during the Hajj. In the 2015 pilgrimage, a mass stampede in Mecca killed more than 750 pilgrims, with more than 900 others injured.

Ma Lijun, legal representative for the device’s manufacturer, Beijing Fengjiang Technology Co., said it’s unclear if the cards will be used more broadly in the future. “It depends on what the China Islamic Association decides,” he said.

The China Islamic Association didn’t respond to a request for comment Tuesday. In an online posting when the system was first announced last year, the association said the Chaojin Tong (Hajj Communication) devices were jointly designed by China’s State Administration for Religious Affairs and the association to “ensure the safe travel of Hajj participants overseas.”

One Hajj pilgrim lost his way last year, the Henan Province religious administration posted online.

“Our team was able to search for him through the Hajj Chest Electronic Smart Card system, accurately identify his specific location amid the crowd of Haji in the holy mosque square, and retrieve him,” the religious administration said.

Faithful Muslims seek to make at least one pilgrimage to Mecca in their lifetimes, a goal that isn’t readily achieved by many in China. Mr. Zenz said only a small number of Chinese Muslims are “hand-picked” by the government to join the Hajj each year.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/chinese-surveillance-expands-to-muslims-making-mecca-pilgrimage-1533045703